Unattractive Magnets

Our Towns

Hartford

April 28, 2003

State education officials appear out of touch as they ask Hartford to open and staff two new magnet schools by September even while the city considers laying off employees and closing neighborhood schools to balance its budget.

There is no space available now to house the magnet schools. If there were room, district officials estimate that it would cost them $3.83 million to open the magnets, an expense that would further erode existing school services and anger parents.

Nevertheless, the state is pressuring Hartford to open the magnets in order to appear in compliance with the agreement to settle the Sheff vs. O'Neill desegregation lawsuit. That deal calls for the state to provide the resources to plan, build and operate two magnet schools a year for the next four years. The magnet schools must recruit 20 percent of their students from suburban schools.

But with time running out on the first two magnets, state officials propose to have Hartford pay -- with a chance of being reimbursed -- to open the schools in temporary space, possibly portable classrooms. They have even offered to waive the requirement to recruit suburban students, perhaps because no suburban parents are likely to send their children to ill-defined magnet schools with no permanent address.

Hartford has enough problems of its own. City Manager Lee Erdman proposed a school budget of $180 million, $20 million less than the district receives now and $14 million less than the legal minimum. If the budget is approved, layoffs and other cost-cutting measures appear inevitable.

The Sheff vs. O'Neill settlement places the responsibility for creating magnet schools on the state's shoulders. If the state wants two new magnet schools by September, it should pay now to have them opened properly. Otherwise, the advantages offered by quality magnet schools would be lost and the public's opinion of them damaged by a haphazard approach.